Quote

Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on income distribution, the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.

Thomas Sowell

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
Philosophy
Fervent
Literature
Earned
Fact
Distribution
Often
Prosperity
Facts
Economics
Political
Despite
Income
Voluminous
Cold
Distributed

More quotes by Thomas Sowell

Image
The fashionable idiocy that haters must have justifications is one of those ideas that George Orwell said only an intellectual could believe -- because no one else could be such a fool.
Thomas Sowell
Image
The left takes its vision seriously - more seriously than it takes the rights of other people. They want to be our shepherds. But that requires us to be sheep.
Thomas Sowell
Image
The reason so many problems do not get solved in Washington is that solving those problems is not the No. 1 priority: Re-election is.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.
Thomas Sowell
Image
In this era of political correctness, some people seem unaware that being squeamish about words can mean being blind to realities.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Social Engineering - The art of replacing what works with what sounds good.
Thomas Sowell
Image
The government is now in a position to do what Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression of the 1930s - use a crisis of the times to create new institutions that will last for generations. To this day, we are still subsidizing millionaires in agriculture because farmers were having a tough time in the 1930s.
Thomas Sowell
Image
An e-mail from a reader says that liberals like to take the moral high ground, even though their own moral relativism means that there is no moral high ground.
Thomas Sowell
Image
The reason so many people misunderstand so many issues is not that these issues are so complex, but that people do not want a factual or analytical explanation that leaves them emotionally unsatisfied. They want villains to hate and heroes to cheer - and they don't want explanations that do not give them that.
Thomas Sowell
Image
If you start from a belief that the most knowledgeable person on earth does not have even one percent of the total knowledge on earth, that shoots down social engineering, economic central planning, judicial activism, and innumerable other ambitious notions favored by the political left.
Thomas Sowell
Image
In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people - and to hate those other people.
Thomas Sowell
Image
What makes it possible for politicians to do so many things that are economically counterproductive is that neither the public nor the media know enough of the basics to understand what's wrong with what they're saying.
Thomas Sowell
Image
No individual and no generation has had enough personal experience to ignore the vast experience of the human race that is called history. Yet most of our schools and colleges today pay little attention to history. And many of our current policies repeat mistakes that were made, time and again, in the past with disastrous results.
Thomas Sowell
Image
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
Thomas Sowell
Image
When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.
Thomas Sowell
Image
When all is said and done, the Constitution of the United States is a set of words on a piece of paper. The only way that the Constitution can protect us is if we protect the Constitution.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Before the Iraq war I was quite disturbed by some of the neoconservatives, who were saying things like, What is the point of being a superpower if you can't do such-and-such, take on these responsibilities? The point of being a superpower is that people will leave you alone.
Thomas Sowell
Image
The freedom of America is the freedom to live your own life and take your own chances.
Thomas Sowell
Image
There are only two economists in Congress and hundreds of lawyers. Does that explain why the government is in such a mess?
Thomas Sowell
Image
Some full professors could more accurately be described as empty professors.
Thomas Sowell